Saturday, December 30, 2017

Detest - Dorval (1994)

"Dorval" by Detest was a less known, late came, but genuine classic of the early '90s death metal wave.
The intro already assumes something unusual, with a background sound insolently taken from the first Terminator movie. Unlike similar bands, Detest wasn't into the usual horror and gore based topics. "Dorval" was like the musical version of "Lailah", a science fiction comic created by the French comic artist Caza, by following it's story line. An unusual concept selection for sure, but the album is fully enjoyable without having any clue about the inspirational background. Typical old school death metal with raw themes and noisy solos gave the main musical characteristics, but the song structures were creatively handled and still the album could offer some nice and unexpected surprises. So even though the band mainly operated with simpler and raw themes, the album still became more complex than usual. It's not an easy record, but a very well composed one and may deserve more attention than how much it received back then.